Authors: James Patterson

Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #General, #Suspense, #antique

The 5th Horseman (29 page)

BOOK: The 5th Horseman

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Someone hated Garza enough to attack with such incredible violence. Someone he’d trusted enough to let inside the house. The same person who’d then removed Garza’s body and locked the door.

Who?

Sirens cut out as the squad cars pulled up on the lawn. I walked out to the front steps and was calling the DA’s office for a Mincy warrant to secure the scene, when Charlie Clapper came up the walkway.

He greeted me with a “Hey, Lindsay” and a flip of his hand. A second later, I heard him say “bloody hell” as Jacobi came out of the garage and crossed the lawn toward me.

“Garza has two cars,” Jacobi said. “His SUV is in the garage, but his Mercedes is missing. There’s another car parked next to the SUV. It’s a black BMW sedan, with vanity plates. Spells out redhead.”

Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

Chapter 127

A DOZEN MOBILE UNITS and the crime scene van had walled off Garza’s house from the main road. Yellow tape flapped in the breeze and was tangled on the railing going up the front stairs.

I stood under glaring sunlight, blinking at Jacobi as my hypothetical reconstruction of the homicide totally blew apart. Why was O’Mara’s car at Garza’s house?

Had she killed Garza? Could she have maneuvered his body into that Mercedes Roadster? Or was it the other way around?

Had O’Mara clipped Garza with that crystal vase, and he’d retaliated with killing force?

Either way, we had no body, a missing car, O’Mara’s car in the garage, and one of the bloodiest crime scenes I’d ever seen.

“Okay,” I said to Jacobi. “So where is O’Mara? Where is Redhead?”

While inspectors and uniforms canvassed Garza’s neighbors, Jacobi and I used our squad car as an office. He got out a BOLO on Garza’s Mercedes while I called O’Mara’s office and got her assistant, Kathy, on the line.

I imagined her sharp blade of a face, her big hair, as O’Mara’s assistant talked and ate her lunch in my ear.

“Maureen’s taking a week off. She needed a vacation,” Kathy said. “She’s earned it.”

“I’m sure. Where’d she go?” I asked, hearing the edge in my voice. Repressed panic.

“What’s the problem, Lieutenant?”

“It’s police business, Kathy.”

“Maureen didn’t say where she was going, but I can give you all her numbers.”

“That would be a big help.”

I dialed O’Mara’s cell phone, got her mailbox. I left my number on her pager. Called her house and got a busy signal, again and again.

Jacobi punched out O’Mara’s name on the console computer, and got data from the DMV.

He read it out loud. “Maureen Siobhan O’Mara; Caucasian; single; date of birth eight, fifteen, seventy-three; height five nine; weight one fifty-two. She’s a big girl,” Jacobi mused.

He turned the screen so I could see O’Mara’s photo and her address.

“We can be there in fifteen minutes,” he said.

“Let’s try for ten.”

Jacobi backed the car away from the curb and, with tires scraping the concrete, cut around the scene-mobile and into the traffic lane.

I flipped on the grille lights and the siren as we shot up Leavenworth toward O’Mara’s house in the tony enclave of Sea Cliff.

Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

Chapter 128

NUMBER 68 SEAVIEW TERRACE was a mango-colored Mediterranean-style villa with an unobstructed view of the bay, the bridge, Sausalito, and maybe Honolulu for all I knew.

Birds chirped in the shrubbery.

Jacobi and I mounted the porch, my mind seething with vivid images of the carnage at Garza’s house and the cyclone of questions whirling in my mind.

Come on, Maureen. Please be home.

I pressed the doorbell, and a no-nonsense buzzer blatted loudly at my touch. I heard no answering voice, though, no footfalls coming toward the door.

I shouted, “Police,” pressed the buzzer again, stood back as Jacobi stepped in and banged the door with his fist.

No answer. Nothing at all. C’mon, Redhead.

That creepy feeling came over me again — the horrors of death playing my vertebrae like a xylophone.

O’Mara was missing, and her secretary didn’t know where she was. We’d already played fast and loose with exigent circumstances once today. I was going to chance it again.

“I smell gas,” I lied.

“Take it easy, Boxer. I’m too old to walk a beat.”

“Garza’s place looks like a slaughterhouse, Warren, and O’Mara’s car is there. It’s my ass if we screw up.”

I wrenched the doorknob, and it turned in my hand. I let the door swing open slowly, as if a breeze had given it a tap.

We took out our guns. Again.

“This is the police. We’re coming in.”

The entranceway opened into a bright, many-windowed living room with tropical printed furnishings and large, brilliant oil paintings. I was looking for trouble inside O’Mara’s house, but as far as I could see, nothing had been disturbed.

We swept the ground floor, calling out to each other.

“Clear!”

We found one bright room after another, empty and spotlessly clean.

As we climbed the stairs, a scent I’d thought was potpourri got stronger, leading us to the master bedroom.

The bedroom was painted peach. A life-size oil-on-canvas painting of an entwined couple doing the deed faced the king-size bed. I don’t get this kind of “art” in bedrooms, but obviously some people must like it. Apparently, Maureen O’Mara was one of them.

To the left of the bed was a wall of windows with a view to die for.

The opposite wall was made up entirely of closets. The mirrored bifold doors were open, all eight of them, and O’Mara’s clothes were strewn everywhere. What happened here? How long ago?

Shoes were scattered against the baseboards under black scuff marks where they’d been hurled at the walls.

Cosmetics had been swept off the dresser, and a perfume bottle was lying broken on the hardwood floor.

Inside the bathroom, a cordless phone had been hammered against the green marble counter, splintered into plastic shards and colored wire.

That explained the busy signal.

Had Maureen gotten a phone call she didn’t like?

My radio sputtered at my hip, Dispatch with a report from a squad car.

The patrol unit had been going north on the 101 when it spotted Garza’s Mercedes heading in the opposite direction. The cruiser had crossed the nearest break in the divider, tried to follow, but had lost him.

This much we knew: only minutes ago, Garza’s Mercedes was pointed toward the airport.

Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

Chapter 129

DENNIS GARZA GRIPPED the steering wheel, stared at the center line as the dull highway scenery blew past his windshield.

His mouth was hanging half open, and his reflexes were dull. He knew he was in some kind of shock, but the outrage was tangible, just below the feelings of vertigo and disbelief.

What had happened today still made no sense to him.

He’d woken up feeling fantastic. Then the day had taken a one-hundred-eighty-degree header straight to hell.

Fucking Maureen.

She’d known from the start that after the trial, he was going to take his share and leave the country.

She was supposed to stay in San Francisco, bank her millions, become the hottest litigator in town.

That was her dream, wasn’t it?

When had she gone off track? Why had she changed her mind?

It had been a memorable affair and an elegant heist. No doubt about that. They’d both come out huge winners. Wasn’t that enough?

Why couldn’t she leave perfect alone?

“I didn’t do it for the money,” she’d told him this morning, her voice swimming in tears. “The money is nothing. I did it for you, Dennis. I did it because I loved doing this with you.”

He would have shaken his head in disgust, but he was feeling queasy again.

He clenched the steering wheel. Then he touched the loose teeth in his lower jaw with his tongue, felt his whole head throbbing.

A wave of images flooded back. Unbelievable. Unthinkable.

First, the shouting match with Maureen. Then the sickening events that followed. He could still hear the terrible screams. See the torrents of blood all over fucking everything, until finally the screaming had stopped.

Garza wrenched himself back into the present. He had to keep a grip on himself. Forget what had just happened and get the hell away from San Francisco.

Staying within the speed limit, Garza took the exit at South Airport Road. He followed the green overhead signs to the Park ’n’ Fly long-term lot.

His hand was shaking as he collected his ticket from the machine and parked the car along the Cyclone fence on the west side of the ugly, dust-blown lot between two dirty American cars.

Good-bye to all this. Good-bye, USA.

He could already see the approach to Rio from the air. The magnificent South American city planted in the green-sheathed mountains, rising up from the sea. The stunning statue of Christ presiding over everything.

He could sort out everything once he got to Brazil.

Garza turned off the car engine; then he shook her awake. Not wasting any charm on her now.

“Hey, let’s go,” he said. “C’mon. You’re going to have to handle your own bags.”

Garza got out of the car, opened the door of the Roadster, pulled his luggage out of the backseat.

Called out to her again.

“Did you hear me, Maureen? The bus to the terminal is loading now. If we miss this flight, we’re fucked.”

Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

Chapter 130

I INSISTED ON DRIVING us to the airport, and Jacobi reluctantly let me take the wheel.

“Whatsa matter, Boxer? What’s your problem?”

“I want to drive, okay? Rank has its privileges.”

“Suit yourself, Lieutenant.”

I sped throughout that twenty-minute drive, cars parting left and right in front of our wailing siren. I turned up the volume on the crackling two-way radio, hoping for another update, worried, because after that single reported sighting of Garza’s car, it hadn’t been seen again.

As I drove, two questions chased around inside my head.

Who had been driving Garza’s Mercedes?

Who had been stabbed to death on Garza’s floor?

I veered right into the departure lanes, Jacobi calling out the side window as he saw Sergeant Wayne Murray from the Airport Bureau waving us down outside terminal A.

Sergeant Murray climbed into the backseat. He directed us through a service entrance to the core of the terminal. From there, we followed on foot through unmarked doors and up back stairways to the squad room and the office of Lieutenant Frank Mendez.

Mendez was wiry, five foot nine, about my age, polite but busy. He stood to shake our hands, offered us chairs across from his desk.

Then he briefed us on the American Airlines triple 7 jet that had been grounded a hundred yards south of gate 12 for the past hour, doors sealed, takeoff denied.

“Dr. Garza’s name is on the passenger manifest,” he told us. “So is Ms. O’Mara’s. They’re on a flight to Miami, connecting to Rio. I don’t know how much longer we can keep that bird on the ground, though.”

Mendez pointed out the Mr. Coffee machine on top of his file cabinet; then he disappeared out of the office.

The phones on the lieutenant’s desk rang without pause. Just outside the office, banks of flickering video monitors showed grainy black-and-white images of passengers going through ticket checkpoints, scenes of luggage loading docks and carousels.

Uniforms and military units bustled around the room while Jacobi and I babysat the lieutenant’s fax machine, waiting for it to cough up the paperwork we needed.

I wondered if Garza and O’Mara believed that a maintenance crew was working on a small mechanical problem.

Were they sipping mimosas and reading the Financial Times?

I slugged down the dregs of my coffee, sunk the empty container into the trash can.

Jacobi coughed, buried his face in his hands, said, “Damn,” and coughed again.

At 6:05 p.m., the fax machine burped, and the DA’s letterhead chugged out of its works followed by the warrant we’d been waiting for.

As the last sheet ended its halting journey, Mendez returned. He took the pages out of the tray, read them.

“Okay,” he said with a smile. “Let’s rock and roll. We’re legal.”

Womans Murder Club 5 - The 5th Horseman

Chapter 131

MY PULSE RACED as sixteen of us put on oversized black Windbreakers with POLICE stenciled front and back. We all checked our weapons, then jogged down four steep flights of stairs to the garage.

I joined Mendez in the lead cruiser, thinking ahead as we sped across the tarmac. Mendez contacted the control tower. Barked into his radio, “Shut down this runway. Forthwith.”

I was anxious, but more than that, I was exhilarated to be leading this command. And I was anticipating bringing Garza down. I wanted him so badly it hurt just to think about it.

Striplights blazed on the airfield, and a United jumbo jet roared overhead, its impossible weight lifting into the wind-whipped gloaming.

I peered up at the grounded American 777, then watched as the rolling staircase was locked to the side of the aircraft.

Patrol-car doors opened and closed all around the plane.

Cloaked in twilight, we trotted toward the aircraft.

BOOK: The 5th Horseman

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